Prefab Sprout

At first glance just another fancifully-named '80s UK indie band (see also Aztec Camera), Prefab Sprout harbored one of the era's truly great singer-songwriters in frontman Paddy McAloon. As beholden to the Great American Songbook and vintage Nashville heartbreak as he was to Randy Newman and Elvis Costello, McAloon delivered five albums' worth of remarkable songs between 1984 and 1990, including the near-perfect classics Steve McQueen (renamed Two Wheels Good on its original US release) and Jordan: The Comeback. Even From Langley Park To Memphis, which suffers from horribly dated late-'80s production clichés, features solid songwriting underneath the too-slick surfaces. But apparently the critically-adored Jordan proved too difficult to top: in the two decades following, Prefab Spout released only three albums, and only 1997's spare, crystalline Andromeda Heights featured the band's original lineup. A spate of severe health problems in the late '90s exacerbated an apparent case of writer's block: 2001's The Gunman and Other Stories consists largely of forgettable songs McAloon had written for other artists, and 2009's Let's Change the World With Music, initially trumpeted as a new album, turned out to be a set of McAloon's solo demos the band's label had rejected in 1993.